How to Ditch Your Android Device for the iPhone

Rebelling against the Dark Side doesn’t mean you have to start at the beginning.

We know, we know. You’ve wanted to switch to an iPhone for a long time, and now that the next iPhone is almost here, it’s finally time to make moves. But what about all your precious Google Contacts, the photos you’ve taken throughout the years, and precious music? Fortunately, with a few easy steps, you can move all that stuff to your iOS device faster than you can say "I can’t believe I stuck with Android this long." Here’s make the move without the hassle.

Difficulty: Medium

What You Need:

> Android Phone

> Mac running OS X

1. Export Your Contacts to your Mac

If you only want your Gmail contacts available on your iPhone, you can skip this step entirely -- just ensure that you’re setting up your mail correctly. But if you’re ready to dive headfirst into Apple integration, it’s easy to move from Google’s cloud to Apple’s awesome Address Book (which became even fancier in Lion). Keep in mind iCloud will incorporate the cloud better than ever, but there’s no shame in housing your contacts in an application.

Open your browser and head to Gmail. Click My Contacts in the sidebar, then click the More drop-down menu in the center of the page. A box with several options will appear. Click the bubble that says “All Contacts” and select the “vCard format” for the export format. The Contacts will instantly begin downloading. Open Address Book and click Command-O to import your contacts. In the Finder sidebar, click Downloads and select Contacts.vcf. Click “Add” on the box that appears, and voila! Your Gmail contacts are now integrated in your Mac and you’re one step closer to being rid of that green alien.

Once you’ve figured out how to download your contacts, doing so is unmistakably simple.

2. Don’t Waste Your Photos

No matter how much better your new iPhone’s camera will be (which is probably a lot), losing precious photographs is in no way necessary. There are a dozen ways to get your Android photos to your Mac, but the easiest way we’ve found is simply mounting the Google phone on our computer.

To do this, plug your Android device into a USB port on your Mac and pull down the status bar at the top of your phone’s screen. Next, tap the button labeled “USB connected” or, alternatively, “charge only.” Tap it, and choose “Disk Drive,” then press Done. If you open iPhoto, you will see a device called “NO NAME.” All your device’s photos will be there, ready to be pulled from your phone. Click “Import All” and close iPhoto. Videos can be gabbed in the same manner.

As if just keeping your photos isn’t good enough, they’ll also be automatically organized in your iPhoto library.

3. Get Your Music Off Your Phone

Who wants to leave their tunes behind either? With your Android phone still mounted, click on the Disk Drive icon on the desktop (again, likely called “NO NAME”). Inside you’ll find a host of folders you probably don’t want to touch and one invitingly called Music. Simply drag and drop this folder into iTunes, and you’ll keep all the music.

We’re sure many devices will have different folders inside, but our Android device also housed our movies and pictures in DCIM > 100MEDIA, which could be dragged and dropped to our desktop as well.

4. Take Inventory of Your Apps

Unfortunately, we haven’t found any high-tech solutions for taking inventory of your Android Apps besides writing down the ones you have or opening tabs in your browser and comparing market.android.com with iTunes.com. But luckily, even with that extremely unwieldy cross-checking, there are so many apps in the iTunes store that you can probably find an exact replica for each app you adore in the Android Marketplace. And call this a time to consider how much easier this whole process will be with iCloud…

Fortunately, you probably won’t have to do this ever again. iOS 5 makes it incredibly easy to re-download apps, music, and photographs you’ve purchased, whether they’re on your device or not.